Drivers 'victims of oil company profiteering'

Holidaymakers returning home were being held to ransom by oil companies and petrol stations that had jacked up prices during the busy period, a motoring advocate said yesterday.

02 January 2003

Holidaymakers returning home were being held to ransom by oil companies and petrol stations that had jacked up prices during the busy period, a motoring advocate said yesterday.

Richard Talbot, president of the Motorists Action Group faction for the NRMA board election on January 15, has dismissed the oil companies' case that price rises are part of a normal cycle.

"They [the companies] say that it's a demand and supply situation, but we all know it's simply profiteering," said Mr Talbot, who is also an NRMA director.

"Petrol prices seem to increase within hours of each other and by an area-by-area basis basically overnight ... Yet there have been no major tanker deliveries and no major change in the price of crude oil."

Petrol prices are sitting between 95 cents and $1 a litre in country NSW.

Kevin Hughes, an industry consultant and a past CEO of the Service Stations Association, said claims of exploitation were nonsense. Prices rose before holidays because oil companies removed their discounts.

"It's not that they're exploiting," he said. "They can't continue to discount all of the time because the margins on petrol are very narrow for service station operators and oil companies."

Oil prices had jumped before Christmas because of global factors such as a Venezuelan oil strike, the threat of war in Iraq and the European winter, he said.

A spokeswoman for Esso and Mobil said: "The Australian petrol market is highly competitive, and Australian petrol prices are consistently among the lowest in the developed world."

Mr Talbot said drivers could look forward to the findings at Easter of an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into whether oil companies were price fixing.

After the watchdog raided the offices of some oil companies in Melbourne last year, petrol prices did not rise around holidays because they were "obviously scared", Mr Talbot said. "However, they seem to have gone back to their old habits."

The CEO of NRMA Motoring and Services, Rob Carter, said motorists could save $10 on a tank of petrol if they filled up early in the week.

AAP

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